Sometimes I’m lazy. You know what I mean. Right? You know that little white balance button on my camera? Well I don’t really like to push it unless I absolutely need to (which by the way doesn’t really ever happen.) So anyway, I have the nasty habit of thinking, ‘hey, I can always correct it in Photoshop. No prob. Well a while back, I invented a way to correct color casts in photos. (OK, OK, maybe ‘invent’ isn’t quite the right word. Maybe ‘discovered’ or ‘learned’ might be better words. I don’t remember where I learned it though. So here’s a do-over, just for you.) So here ya go, a little tut on correcting color casts easily. Note: This works best with a photo that is properly exposed or corrected with the levels or curves too.
Here’s the picture we are starting with. You can see the slight yellow cast that often happens when photographing under tungsten lights.
So the first thing to do, is to create an adjustment layer for ‘levels.’ Here’s my levels dialouge for the photo above. See the little eyedroppers in the bottom right corner. The first is to set the black point, the second is to set the gray point and the last is to set the white point. For our purposes, let’s double-click the middle eye-dropper tool.
This will allow you to select a target mid-tone color. So what you need to do is find an area in the photo that is supposed to be white. But first, in the dialogue box, put the cursor in the R(ed) section by RGB.
Now you need to click the area that is supposed to be white. Now, this is important, after you click the area don’t move that little eye-dropper AT ALL. Take your hand off the mouse or drop your tablet stylus. I know it’s tough, but you’ve got to trust me here. K? BTW, I have found that it is really easiest to use a mouse for this or the touchpad of a laptop, but it’s very difficult to keep the cursor from moving with a tablet stylus.
Ok, remember under the RGB section of the color selector. Under R(ed), there will be a number. You need to change both the G(reen) and B(blue) sections to match the R number. Because you can’t use your mouse, you’ll need to use the tab key to advance to the next input box. You can see that my numbers all say 160. When you’ve finished inputting numbers, hit the ‘enter’ key.
Now, without, moving the eyedropper tool, click the mouse over the exact same area again. You should see an instant change. Here are both version of my photo, before and after. Cool huh?
Tags: color correct, photography, photoshop
